"Time of death?"
"We believe it was about two weeks ago," she said.
"Long time ago, detective."
"Sure is."
"How and where did it happen?"
"Where it happened... we're positive it happened in there, in the co-op building. We have a witness that places both Samuel and Cassie in the building. Same witness says Samuel left on his own, a couple of hours after they arrived and went in. Since that night, Cassie has been missing. Never reported to work, never returned phone calls from her mom and friends, and her apartment is neat and tidy. Clothes left behind, luggage left behind, no activity from credit cards, bank accounts untouched."
"I see." I looked around the expanse of the parking lot. It looked cold. It had to be very cold indeed.
"Do you know how it happened?"
"No. We have no body, and no usable trace evidence. Not a damn thing. He took her into that building, and only he came out."
I gently said, "That's impossible. There's always trace evidence of some kind at a crime scene. Always."
She sighed. "I know. I've always thought that, too. But this... this is unique. Look, let's get inside and I'll show you. That'll be easier than trying to describe it."
"Sounds fine."
I stepped out and the wind seemed to shoot right through me. It was cold, but it was a cold that was nothing like the cold out west. Out back where I once lived and worked, it was a dry, achy cold, something that seemed to want to suck the moisture right out of your skin and bones. Here, it was a damp, cutting cold, coming right off the ocean, like it wanted to moisten you first, to make it easier to freeze you.
I made sure my coat was buttoned and followed the detective up to the fishing co-op building. As we got closer I felt a bit better, and a bit guilty, at having earlier chastised the detective on the sanctity of the crime scene. There was a bright orange sticker covering the part of the door and adjacent wall, with her name and signature, so that was a good start. But still... two weeks after the supposed murder. The first forty-eight hours in a homicide investigation are always key, before witnesses forget or change their stories, before evidence is removed or destroyed, before alibis are rehearsed and rehearsed so that they sound as true as gold. Two weeks...
A very long time.
Detective Woods sliced through the orange sticker with a key but before she opened up the door, I said, "Hold on."
"Okay."
I turned and looked out across the lot. A bleak view indeed, with only the detective's cruiser lending any sort of color. It was gray and white and black, and out on the end was a gate that led to Atlantic Avenue. I'm sure that in the middle of summer, traffic was heavy on that particular stretch of road, but not today, not in January. I waited and waited and not a single car drove by.
"You said you had a witness."
"That's right."
"A witness who was here, two weeks ago, at night, and saw Samuel enter this building with Cassie, and depart some hours later, alone."
"Yes."
I turned to her. "Detective, what kind of witness do you have? It's frigid out here. At night it must be even worse. You're telling me that you had a witness out here, at night in January, who saw your suspect and victim enter this building?"
"That's right."
"A defense attorney would say that's pretty convenient. Who's your witness?"
She unlocked the door. "Another problem, I'm afraid. Our witness is the resident harbor drunk. Never mind convenience. Any defense attorney will be having a day at the circus over his reliability"
"I'm sure."
"If you don't mind, I'll tell you more about our witness later."
"That'll be fine."
She opened the door and we stepped into the Tyler Harbor Fishing Cooperative. Before us was a small function room, with tile floor, folding chairs and some tables, and a raised stage at one end, flanked by an American flag and the dull dark blue flag for the State of New Hampshire. It looked like the kind of place where bingo contests were held, or Saturday night ham and bean suppers, or maybe just a place to smoke and drink and trade fishing stories.
"Tell me about the cooperative," I said.
"Set up a couple of years ago with seed money from the state. Used to be, each fisherman out here was on his own when it came to his catch. He or she would come in with a day or two of work, and there'd be brokers here from Boston, undercutting each and every one of them, trying to get the best price. Here, the co-op helps set its own price, and there's even a facility here for initial processing that allows the catch to get from here to Boston restaurants in just a couple of hours."
"Business okay?"
"Fishermen never have a good fishing day, but they're doing all right. Ready to see our problem?"
"Sure."
"Right this way."
To the left was a set of heavy metal doors, with rubber trim around the bottom and tops, that made it hard to push in. But Detective Woods put her shoulder to it and we went into a much larger, cooler room, and I instantly saw what the problem was.
"Well, this is certainly something," I said.
"It certainly is," she said wistfully.
The room was two-stories tall, with a concrete floor with drains set in about every eight feet or so, illuminated by banks upon banks of fluorescent lights from the metal framework of the ceiling. Along the walls were waist-high stainless steel tables and adjoining sinks, and in the center was a work area that looked like it belonged in a restaurant, with a collection of knives, cleavers and sharpening tools set on stands. There were two large refrigerators and some sort of machinery set up in the center, next to four stainless steel sinks. Diane walked over to the center, where the machinery was located. I followed, our footsteps sounding loud in the enclosed space. Near the sinks were overhead hose systems, like those of dish washing stations in restaurants.
"This is where fishermen and their helpers can gut and clean some of the larger fish, so it can get to market quicker. Refrigerators make the ice and are used for temporary storage."
I looked around. "I guess you didn't find her head or hands anywhere, did you."
She crossed her arms. "No. And we didn't find anything else. Not a damn thing."
"Theory?" I asked.
"Best guess we have is that he took her in here, subdued her by a blow to the head or something similar. Then... then it gets interesting. According to the theory."
"Best theories are always the most interesting ones."
She took a breath, walked over to the collection of stainless steel tables and sinks. "We believe he took her over here after he subdued her. Draped her head over the edge of the sink... slit her throat. Then... well, note the collection of knives and cleavers. If you take a look over here --"
Which I did, gazing into the sink, which had quite a wide drain.
"--you'll note the drain."
She flipped a switch on the side of a console. There was a whirring, grinding noise which I recognized, and when I nodded, Diane shut the switch off. The large room was quiet again.
"Industrial-strength garbage disposal," I said.
"The same. With water running, with cool nerves and steady hands, we think he dismembered the body and shoved it into the disposal."
"Where does it dispose to?"
"The harbor, right beneath us. There's a water flushing system that works with the grinder, flushes everything out."
I looked down the open drain. "Nothing?"
She shook her head. "Not a damn thing. Luminol shows some trace blood evidence, but not enough for DNA analysis. Not a drop, not a smear, nothing. We've gone through the entire building. Nothing. We even searched the overhead framework and lighting, in case an artery was sliced at the right time and we got arterial spray. Not a thing. Plus, give any semi-competent defense attorney a crack at what we have found... some trace blood in a place where men work day in and day out with knives and cleavers. Lots of room there for reasonable doubt."
"I suppose you've taken apart the disposal system."
"Piece by piece. Had the pieces spread out on plastic. Each one examined. No bone splinters, no tissue, no dental fragments and again, we exposed every piece of metal to Luminol. Faintest traces of blood. Again, a good lawyer would claim that it was fish blood. Or something that dripped from somebody's hand or fingers as they worked on gutting a fish last week."
I backed away and took in the scene. "He was very thorough."
"Quite. For a fisherman who didn't finish high school, he was quite smart. And here, I haven't shown you the best."
Diane went around to the other side of the center island of sinks and machinery, and picked up a hand-held cleaning device of some sort, with a triggering handle and long, wand-like apparatus. She pointed the wand away from her and squeezed the handle. A burst of steam came out, droplets falling to the clean concrete.
"We're sure that after he cut up and disposed of the body, everything within reach of this piece of equipment was steam-cleaned. There's also some bleach in a rear storage area. Combine the two and we have a very troubling crime scene."
"The disposal outflow," I said. "Was it checked?"
She replaced the steam-cleaning unit back into its cradle. "Yes. Twice. By divers from the State Police. With the tides and the muck down there and the time that passed since she was reported missing... not a damn thing. We even borrowed a ground-suction device that divers use, to clean up an area for exploration. Sucked the mud and muck out, passed it through a grate on land. Looking for teeth, bone fragments. Like before. Not a damn thing."
I looked around the room again, noting where everything was located, how it was set.
"All right. Who's the witness, and what did he tell you?"
"Witness is one Joshua Thompson. Age fifty-one."
"Who is he?"
She folded her arms. "An old-timer. His family has been in Tyler for generations, fishermen all. But he doesn't fish anymore. He just drinks and smokes and hangs out at the docks, day in and day out, rain, snow, sleet, doesn't matter."
"Why was he here, the night she disappeared?"
"Just happenstance, that's all. He was here and when word got out that she was missing and that her boyfriend was a fishermen with the cooperative, Joshua came forward to let us know what he saw. Which was Samuel driving up in his pickup truck with a young woman, whom he later positively identified as Cassie. The two went in. A few hours later, only Samuel came out. End of story."
"Was he drunk at the time?"
"No doubt about it."
"What's his background?"
Diane said, "Like I said, a fisherman. Went out one stormy day in April with his brothers, on a stern trawler, a number of years ago. Stayed out too long. Rogue wave capsized the boat, his two brothers drowned, and he was the only one left. I think he hangs around the docks to punish himself, maybe, and gets drunk to have the time pass by quicker."